What is social media marketing?
First of all, we need to define Social Media Marketing (SMM). When you use social media to reach your marketing and sales, you are marketing social media; We do not mean, for example, establishing a sales page on Instagram and selling your products; Of course, this can be done, but it is better to be more quiet and experienced.
The main base of your clients is the site, and these networks are supposed to help the site rise, brand, increase sales and even increase website traffic by bringing you closer to your audience.
Your page on social media is like a shop where you do not pay to rent, but you can reach a large number of customers. Activity on social networks (including Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) will increase your audience and have long-term effects on branding and advertising.
For example, large and small brands, in partnership with Instagram influencers (influential people on Instagram), place their products in people’s minds and encourage them to buy.
Why should my business be on social media?
Did you know that social media has the highest growth speed in history? Even more than the growth trend of Internet use! Many people spend most of their time on these networks.
How many hours do you spend on these networks? How many times a day do you check your Instagram, Twitter, or other apps?
The fact is that these media are our means of communication and interaction and have now become a big part of our lives. A business needs to be where its users are to connect with its audience and improve its marketing process. For this reason, the presence of businesses on social networks is very important. Still, each brand must choose the appropriate platform according to its type of business, target audience, and purpose.
These days, the most popular social media are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapshot.
As a business, you can get on social networks
- Connect with your customers
- Know their needs
- Build your brand
- Increase your site traffic
- Get leads and increase conversion rates
- Increase your sales
- Listen to the opinions and problems of your audience
And increase your interaction with your audience and gain their trust to become your best customer.
Another advantage of using social media is that you can talk to your audience directly; On the other hand, your audience will understand that behind this brand, there are people who care about their audience, not a dry and machine brand that only cares about its own business.
Social media is a place where you can engage and gain people’s trust with text, photos, and videos, using emotions and other content that engages the audience, which you will not have on the site.
This chapter will tell you how you can make the most of social media for your marketing and sales and increase your social presence.
How to do network marketing?
What you want from social media marketing is for people to know your brand and what you want to grow your business and increase your sales. It does not happen overnight! Like any other program, it requires you to take the right steps; Of course, you do not have to work hard as soon as you know what you are doing, what your goal is, and where you are going. From then on, you start running.
But before that, read the following steps. Well, you understand, you can put them aside and make a simple plan for yourself.
There is a famous saying: you have to learn the rules first, then you can break them! So let’s learn the rules first.
1. Have a strategy
Social marketing without a plan is like going to the forest without a plan, you may have fun, but you will be completely lost. Indeed, the appearance of social networks does not fit into planning and these professions, but now the discussion is different; If you want to achieve your business goals, It is not possible without a program.
Of course, you will not make a hard and strange plan. Just specify a few things for yourself in this program:
What is your goal?
First, define your purpose for being on social media; What do you want to achieve? Some businesses aim to be brand aware in these networks. They want people to know them. Some businesses use social media to grow their site traffic and sales.
However, social media can help your brand have high engagement. It can even be a support channel for your customers.
Which platform is right for you?
The largest social networks are Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
You need to choose the media that you know your target audience is there for. For example, for a B2B business (a business whose customers are other businesses), LinkedIn is the best program; Because it is a work network in which companies are present.
If you have public products or your audience can be the general public, Instagram is the best space.
In general, choose the right platforms for your work according to three factors:
- Target audience
- Business Type
- Type of content
What content to share?
Specify the type of content you want to share based on your target audience, your business, and the network you want to operate on. Is the text, photo, or video appropriate, or is it better to link somewhere else? You can get help from the customer persona to find the answers to these questions. Personas are fictional characters who have the characteristics of your customers and help you tailor your program to the characteristics and needs of your customers.
So choose the right content according to your audience and type of business.
For example, a tourism company should do its best to produce photos and videos to show the beauty and landscapes of different cities and countries to the audience. In this way, he can make the audience want to travel to these areas.
Because this content is supposed to be visually appealing, it is more visible on Instagram and Pinterest, as it is more intuitive and image-driven. Do you see? Depending on the type of business, both the content and the media were identified!
2. It is time to produce and publish!
Just as you post a photo or video on your Instagram or Facebook, you will do the same for your brand; however, one should be aware of several things in publishing company posts.
For example, you should produce content that the audience likes or post on days and hours when the audience is more online to get the most views. Social networks usually provide this information in their statistics and data section.
For example, if you go to the Insight section on Instagram, you can find all the information you need here.
In the content section, you can see which of your content got the best feedback or which posts the users liked the most. You can increase these posts in the future.
In the activity section, you can see on which days most users have seen your page; you can publish the most important posts on these days. In the audience section, you can find out how old your users are? Are most women or men? And what time of day are they most online? You can use this data to formulate your Instagram strategy and what kind of content to publish at what time.
Now you say to yourself that we can not spend the whole day creating and publishing posts on virtual networks, or for example, wake up at one o’clock at night and post. You should not be. You have a specific schedule according to which you can prepare your posts in advance. On the other hand, tools like Buffer Publish and NovinHub help you schedule pre-prepared posts to be published automatically at a specific time.
The less you are active in cyberspace, the more your daily conversations increase, the more people comment on your posts, and the more they text you directly!
Sometimes they even talk about your brand without your permission or your knowledge. Leave positive and negative comments under your posts. Now, these professions can be praised. They can be saying problems and criticized.
One of the things you need to do in social media marketing is monitor and control what happens.
If they give a positive comment, thank you and enjoy; But if there is a complaint and a problem in the middle, solve the problem through support before the work is narrowed down.
3. Monitor the results moment by moment!
When it comes to social media marketing, you want to know how you are doing. Do more people see you? Do they interact more with you? How many positive mentions do you get per month? How many people use your brand hashtag?
As we said before, different platforms themselves provide you with data that you can use to gauge your performance in that program; But if you want to see how these networks have helped your business, you can get help from the Google Analytics tool; With this tool, you can find out how many people from social networks have entered your site? How many people have become your customers?
4. And what about advertising
So far, your job has been to roll up your sleeves and keep your social networks thriving with continuous activity (depending on your business plans and goals, of course). After that, if you have more budget for social media marketing, you can go one step further and advertise.
Social platforms are powerful advertising tools that can broaden your audience.
For advertising, you can exchange with people whose work is related to you or ask them to introduce you to their channel. For example, design a good banner and tell them to share it on their page; Do not doubt that being introduced by someone related to your specialty is a positive point for people to trust you and get to know you.
Getting help from influencers is another way to advertise on virtual networks. An influencer can influence people because of his reputation or social status. That is, he has a buyer for people. For example, celebrities and celebrities, experts or bloggers that people follow, or even people in your field of work that most people know can be influencers.
These people advertise your brand or product for a fee, But sometimes, because of their reputation, this amount skyrockets and may not have any economic justification for you at all.
Although influencer advertising costs are still lower than billiards and TV commercials, we suggest that you first work on your page and bring your communications to a point where people will spontaneously introduce you.
